Trump, on the defensive, makes four times more false or suspect claims than Harris in their 2024 presidential debate.
Analysis by Glenn Kessler
In their first and perhaps only presidential debate in the 2024 election, a defensive former president Donald Trump relied on many of his favorite falsehoods to combat attacks from Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris stretched the truth on occasion, but she was no match in the falsehood department against Trump.
Here’s a roundup of 55 claims that caught our interest, in the order in which they were made. (In some cases we have grouped similar Trump statements together.) As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios when we do a roundup of facts in debates.
“Economists have said that that Trump sales tax would actually result, for middle-class families, in about $4,000 more a year.”
— Harris
This may be a high estimate. Trump suggested he wants to impose a 10 percent tax on every imported good entering the United States and a 60 percent tax on every imported good from China. The pro-trade Peterson Institute for International Economics has estimated that this would cost a typical U.S. household in the middle of the income distribution about $1,700 in after-tax income. That’s because tariffs are typically passed on to consumers by importers — a standard economic concept that Trump rejects.
But in one recent campaign rally, Trump mused that he would impose a 20 percent tariff. Peterson redid the numbers and estimated this would cost that typical household more than $2,600 a year.
Harris is relying on an estimate from the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund, which calculates the cost would be $3,900.
But economist Kimberly Clausing, co-author of the Peterson study, says these studies are underestimates because they do not consider the increase in the price of goods that compete with imports. “We have every reason to think U.S. domestic prices would rise in those sectors that compete with imports,” and “that effect is very large,” she said in an email. “The true cost I’d guess is roughly twice as high as our number.”
“I have no sales tax. That’s an incorrect statement. She knows that we’re doing tariffs on other countries. Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world, and the tariff will be substantial in some cases.”
— Trump
Trump is flat wrong to claim that the entire tariff is paid by a foreign country. There is no controversy among economists, who agree that tariffs — essentially a tax on domestic consumption — are paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, which in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who may use imported materials in their products. As a matter of demand and supply elasticities, overseas producers will pay part of the tax if there are fewer goods sold to the United States. Domestic producers in effect get a subsidy because they can raise their prices to the level imposed on importers.
Through the end of his presidency, Trump-imposed tariffs garnered about $75 billion on products from China. So, ultimately, Americans footed the bill for Trump’s tariffs, not the Chinese. Moreover, the China tariff revenue was reduced by $28 billion in payments the government made to farmers who lost business because China stopped buying U.S. soybeans, hogs, cotton and other products in response.
“I had tariffs, and yet I had no inflation. … I had no inflation, virtually no inflation. They had the highest inflation perhaps in the history of our country because I’ve never seen a worse period of time.”
“We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation's history.”
— Trump
Biden did not have the highest inflation in U.S. history. Inflation spiked to 9 percent in mid 2022, a 40-year-high, but is now below 3 percent. (For all of 2022, inflation was 6.5 percent.) Inflation was 12.5 percent in 1980, 13.3 percent in 1979 and 18.1 percent in 1946 — and many other years were higher than 6.5 percent.
Higher prices for goods and services would have happened no matter who was elected president in 2020. Inflation initially spiked because of pandemic-related shocks — increased consumer demand as the pandemic eased and an inability to meet this demand because of supply-chain problems, as companies reduced production when consumers hunkered down during the pandemic. Indeed, inflation rose around the world — with many peer countries doing worse than the United States — because of pandemic-related shocks that rippled across the globe.
“We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
— Trump
This is poppycock. Immigration experts know of no effort by other countries to empty their prisons and mental institutions. As someone who came to prominence in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Trump appears to be channeling Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s 1980 Mariel boatlift. About 125,000 Cubans were allowed to flee to the United States in 1,700 boats — but there was a backlash when it was discovered that hundreds of refugees had been released from jails and mental health facilities.
Helen Fair, research associate at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research in Britain, which tracks the world prison population (except for a handful of countries), says the numbers keep growing. In 2013, 10.2 million people were in prison globally — and that had grown to 10.77 million in 2021. A preliminary estimate for February 2024, not ready to be published, indicates the population has grown even more. “In short, I would disagree with Donald Trump’s assertion,” she said.
“You look at Springfield, Ohio, you look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. … They’re at the highest level of criminality, and we have to get them out.”
“A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
— Trump
Trump is channeling right-wing social media sensations. On Springfield, Trump is referencing a ridiculous social media hoax, supposedly centered on Haitian immigrants eating cats and other animals, that has spawned thousands of memes across right-wing social media. There is no evidence that Haitians are doing this. As for Aurora, police in this Denver suburb say this claim is false — a Venezuelan gang has not taken over an apartment complex.
“I’m not saying that there’s not gang members that don’t live in this community, but what we’re learning out here is that gang members have not taken over this complex,” Heather Morris, the interim police chief in Aurora, said in a recent video taped outside the complex.
Some tenants held a news conference recently and also disputed the notion that the gang had taken over the complex. Instead, they said, the problem was that the apartment block had fallen into disrepair and was infested with bedbugs, cockroaches and rats.
“I created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country. … We had the greatest economy.”
— Trump
This is false. Before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses and sent unemployment soaring, the president could certainly brag about the state of the economy in his first three years. But he ran into trouble when he made a play for the history books to say it was the best economy in U.S. history. By just about any important measure, the economy under Trump did not do as well as it did under Presidents Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton.
The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Yet even that period paled in comparison with the 1950s and 60s. Growth between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In postwar 1950 and 1951, it was 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but it dipped as low as 2.5 percent in 1953.
“What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025, that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected.”
— Harris
“I have nothing to do as you know, and as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025 that’s out there.”
— Trump
Project 2025 is not an official campaign document, and we’ve called out Democrats for sometimes falsely suggesting policies that are not in it, such as on Social Security and the definition of family. It’s a Heritage Foundation report called “Mandate for Leadership,” a 922-page manifesto filled with detailed conservative proposals that is popularly labeled Project 2025. But there are definitely Trump connections.
A CNN review found that 140 people who worked in the Trump administration contributed to the report. In April, at an event for the Heritage Foundation, which produced the document, Trump praised Kevin Roberts, its president, and appeared to endorse Project 2025. “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America,” he said.
“We handed them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in.”
— Trump
Trump is right on stocks, wrong on economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 29,440 on Feb. 14, 2020, before markets swooned over the pandemic, and had risen to 31,198 by the day President Joe Biden took office. But the unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February 2020 — and 6.4 percent in January 2021.
“What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump’s plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy. What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump’s plan would actually explode the deficit. Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as something that would increase inflation and, by the middle of next year, would invite a recession.”
— Harris
Harris’s citations are correct. Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs issued a report saying the economy would shrink because of Trump’s trade and immigration policies. The Penn Wharton Budget Model concluded that Trump’s policies would add $5.8 trillion in deficits over 10 years. (Harris did not mention that Penn Wharton says her policies would add $1.2 trillion to the deficit.) Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote in June, before Biden dropped out of the race, that Trump’s plans could “reignite this inflation.”
“I went to the Wharton School of finance, and many of those professors, the top professors, think my plan is a brilliant plan.”
— Trump
We couldn’t identify any. One Wharton professor posted on X during the debate: “Hi! @wharton Prof here. Show me the many colleagues who say Trump’s plan is any good? I count 0!” (The post was later deleted.) The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for names.
“She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics, and he taught her well.”
— Trump
This is a ridiculous slur. There is no evidence Harris is a Marxist; her economic proposals are generally middle-of-the-road Democratic ideas. She’s been endorsed by more than 90 current and former chief executives of major companies.
There is an element of truth about her father’s academic interests. Donald J. Harris, a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, was the first Black person to receive tenure in Stanford’s economics department and was regarded as a prominent critic of mainstream economic theory from the left.
The Stanford Daily, in 1976, described him as a “Marxist economist” who “taught ‘bad’ courses too well.” The newspaper said there had been opposition to granting him tenure because he was “too charismatic, a pied piper leading students astray from neo-Classical economics.”
But there’s no indication that Harris’s father’s research interest has had any impact on her thinking. Harris’s parents divorced when she was a child, and she has had a strained relationship with her father.
“When you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country monthly, where it’s, I believe, 21 million people, not the 15 that people say, and I think it’s a lot higher than the 21 that’s bigger than New York State pouring in.”
— Trump
This is false. Here, he manages to take a real number — about 5 million migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency — and increase it fourfold. Then he offers a prediction to make it sound even larger.
Here’s the reality: Customs and Border Protection recorded about 10 million “encounters” between February 2021, after Biden took office, through July. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (more than 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.
CBP has released more than 3.2 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through April, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways”— which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to around 5 million.
That’s a big number, but apparently not big enough for Trump.
“And you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, is doing an excellent job. But the governor before he said, the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, will execute the baby. And that’s why I did that, because that predominates, because they’re radical.”
“Just look at the governor, former governor of Virginia, the governor of Virginia said, we put the baby aside and then we determine what we want to do with the baby.”
— Trump
This is false. Trump once again grossly mischaracterizes remarks by former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D), a physician. Earlier in the debate, he mistakenly called him the governor of West Virginia but then correctly identified him later in the debate.
Northam told a radio show in 2019 that late-term abortion procedures are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” Critics suggested the governor was endorsing infanticide. His office later said Northam was referring to medical treatment, not ending the life of a baby.
“Her vice-presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says, ‘execution after birth’ — execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born — is okay.”
— Trump
This is false. Walz has not said this, and “execution after birth” is illegal in all states.
This is a common Republican talking point — that Democrats support nationwide abortion on demand up until the moment of birth. The implication is that late-term abortions are common — and that they are routinely accepted by Democrats.
The reality, according to federal and state data, is that abortions past the point of viability are extremely rare. When they do happen, they often involve painful emotional and even moral decisions.
About two-thirds of abortions occur at eight weeks of pregnancy or earlier, and nearly 90 percent take place in the first 12 weeks, or within most definitions of the first trimester, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights. About 5.5 percent of abortions take place after 15 weeks, with just 1.3 percent at 21 weeks or longer.
“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue [abortion] to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.”
— Trump
This is absurd. The docket for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case in which the right to abortion was overturned, is filled with briefs from legal scholars saying it would be a mistake to overturn decades of legal precedent.
“I have been a leader on fertilization, IVF [in vitro fertilization].”
— Trump
This is in conflict. The Republican Party platform, which Trump points to as his true policy document instead of Project 2025, supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Fetal personhood bestows the same rights currently reserved for people to embryos from the moment of fertilization, which in effect would make IVF illegal.
“Understanding his Project 2025, there would be a national abortion, a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages.”
— Harris
That’s not exactly what Project 2025 says. Claiming that liberal states have become “sanctuaries for abortion tourism,” the report says the Department of Health and Human Services “should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method. It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.”
“They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in, drug dealers to come into our country. And they’re now in the United States and told by their countries like Venezuela, don’t ever come back, or we’re going to kill you. Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down?”
— Trump
This is false. There is no reliable data on crime in Venezuela — the government stopped publishing official data in 2015 — but at campaign rallies, Trump says crime has dropped “a staggering 67 percent” in Venezuela, while at other times he has put the drop in crime at “72 percent in a year.” It’s unclear where Trump gets these numbers. But they’re higher than what even the government says. In May, Venezuelan security officials announced that crime indicators had fallen by 25.1 percent compared with 2023, claiming that security forces had been successful in large-scale operations against criminal groups. Some experts say the impossible-to-verify numbers are intended to boost the sagging popularity of Nicolás Maduro’s government.
“Crime is down all over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof. Despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime.”
— Trump
“The FBI defraud. They were defrauding statements. They, they didn’t include the worst cities. They didn’t include the cities with the worst crime.”
— Trump
This is false. Violent crime rates, especially for homicide in large cities, have fallen sharply during Biden’s presidency, after a surge during the pandemic. The violent crime rate is believed to be near its lowest level in 50 years.
Trump has a point that the quarterly data released in June by the FBI is incomplete — not every law enforcement agency reports its data on time or accurately for the report — but he’s wrong to suggest crime is worse today than at any time in American history. Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and consultant, maintained a dashboard that compiles crime statistics, and it shows the murder rate declining significantly, year over year, in many major cities. Overall, there have been nearly 18 percent fewer murders in 277 cities, according to Asher.
The Council on Criminal Justice examines monthly crime rates for 12 violent, property and drug offenses in 39 American cities that have consistently reported monthly data over the past six years. In July, it reported steep declines in homicide and most other violent crimes back to levels that predated the pandemic.
To back up Trump’s claims of rising crime, his campaign likes to point to the 2022 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a household survey of respondents age 12 and older. For the period of July 2021 to November 2022, it showed a sharp increase in violent crime and an unusual discrepancy with the FBI reports, which are crimes reported to 80 percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies by the public. As a household survey, the NCVS is incomplete. It does not include people who are homeless or in institutions such as prisons, jails and nursing homes; it also does not include crimes against people younger than 12. The victimization survey also excludes murders.
Moreover, crime trends of a single year are almost meaningless. Both the NCVS and the FBI show violent crime has dropped significantly since the early 1990s.
“It [the crime data] was a fraud. Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud.”
— Trump
This is false. Trump can offer no evidence for this claim. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a nonpartisan agency — only the commissioner is a political appointee — that is responsible for data that depicts the health of the economy and labor markets. It collects data from a variety of sources and routinely updates statistics as more data is received. In August, the BLS announced a preliminary estimate that the number of jobs created over the 12 months ending in March would probably be adjusted downward — 818,000 lower than the original estimate of 2.9 million jobs. A final estimate will be released in February.
This was an unusually large adjustment of minus-0.5 percent, which the BLS acknowledged. But there was a similar adjustment in Trump’s presidency (minus-0.3 percent, or 514,000 jobs, in March 2019) and in Barack Obama’s presidency (minus-0.7 percent, or 902,000 jobs, in March 2009). The BLS relies on a survey of about 119,000 employers to produce its monthly estimates of job creation but adjusts the figures every year after examining annual state unemployment insurance tax filings.
“The former vice president [sic] called for defunding federal law enforcement. 45,000 agents, get this, on the day after he was arraigned on 34 felony counts.”
— Harris
This is correct. In a post on Truth Social on April 5, Trump said (in all caps): “Republicans in Congress should defund the DOJ and FBI until they come to their senses.”
“They weaponized the Justice Department. … They used it to try and win an election. … They have fake cases.”
— Trump
False. “Weaponized” is Trump’s code for the Biden administration supposedly using the resources of the U.S. government to target his political opponent. There is no evidence that Biden or Harris directed the Justice Department or local prosecutors to pursue prosecutions of Trump.
“Joe Biden was found essentially guilty on the documents case.”
— Trump
This is false. Trump faced a criminal trial (now on hold) for hoarding classified documents after he left office and refusing to return them. But Biden also discovered that he had retained classified documents at his home and office. He returned them, but a special counsel was appointed to see whether he, too, should face criminal charges. The special counsel, Robert K. Hur, concluded that it would be tough to win a case — because Biden had reasonable defenses, the facts were occasionally murky and Biden (unlike Trump) had cooperated fully with the investigation.
Hur made the point that, if a case were brought to trial, Biden could make a credible case that he had not willfully retained the documents, especially because he cooperated. In many cases, the special counsel decided that the documents were mishandled by mistake — or were not especially important anymore, despite the classification level.
“Let’s talk about fracking because we’re here in Pennsylvania. I made that very clear in 2020, I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of United States. And in fact, I was the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.”
— Harris
This is spin. What Harris said in the vice-presidential debate in 2020, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. He has been very clear about that.” Later in the debate, she reiterated that “the American people know that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact. That is a fact.”
In other words, Harris was stating Biden’s position — but not making clear her own. When she was still running for president months earlier, Harris took a firm stand against fracking.
Asked in a recent CNN interview why she had changed her position, Harris responded: “What I have seen is that we can — we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.” As vice president, she cast the tiebreaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that included many green-energy incentives but also increased leases for fracking.
“The values I bring to the importance of homeownership, knowing not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times.”
— Harris
“I wasn’t given $400 million. I wish I was. My father was a Brooklyn builder, a Brooklyn, Queens, and a great father, and I learned a lot from him. But I was given a fraction of that, a tiny fraction, and have built it into many, many billions of dollars, many, many billions.”
— Trump
It depends on inflation. In 2018, an investigation published in the New York Times revealed that Trump had received $413 million in inflation-adjusted dollars from his father. (In 2024 dollars, the value grows to $525 million.)
For many years, as we have detailed, Trump had falsely claimed the only thing he received was a $1 million loan from his father. That was never credible. He benefited from numerous loans and loan guarantees, as well as his father’s connections, to build his real estate business in Manhattan. His father also set up lucrative trusts to provide steady income. When Donald Trump became overextended in the casino business, his father bailed him out with a shady casino-chip loan — and Trump also borrowed $9 million against his future inheritance.
“Defund the police. She’s been against that forever.”
— Trump
Trump, in his clumsy phrasing, got this right — Harris has never supported defunding the police.
“She went out in Minnesota and wanted to let criminals that killed people that burned down Minneapolis. She went out and raised money to get them out of jail.”
— Trump
This needs context. Until the 2020 killing of George Floyd in police custody, the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) was a relatively small vehicle for assisting people who needed cash for bail. Just weeks after Floyd’s death, it raised an astonishing $35 million, in part because of a tweet by Harris, who at the time was a senator for California lending her name to a fundraising effort.
It turned out that few people involved in the protests needed the MFF’s help to get out of jail. According to an accounting by the American Bail Coalition, verified by The Fact Checker with a review of Hennepin County jail records, all but three of the 170 people arrested during the protests between May 26 and June 2, 2020, were released from jail within a week. Of the 167 released, only 10 had to put up a monetary bond to be released; in most cases, the amounts were nominal, such as $78 or $100. In fact, 92 percent of those arrested had to pay no bail — and 29 percent of those arrested did not face charges.
But there have been some instances of the MFF assisting people accused of serious crimes after they were released, including murder, attempted murder and third-degree assault. The man accused of murder had been jailed originally on an indecent-exposure charge, which called for bail of $2,000.
“If she won the election, the day after that election, they’ll go back to destroying our country, and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills, and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out.”
— Trump
This is false. Domestic oil production and natural gas production already hit record highs under Biden in December, according to the Energy Information Administration. There was a slight dip in January because of production issues, but the EIA projects the December production levels will be sustained through the rest of 2024.
“When are those people going to be prosecuted? When are the people that burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted, or in Seattle, they went into Seattle, they took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle.”
— Trump
This is false. People were prosecuted in Seattle and Minneapolis.
In Seattle, two people were killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a nonprofit. Summer Taylor, a Black Lives Matter activist, died when a car rammed into the protests. Another person, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr., was shot in an incident that ACLED said was tied to the broader unrest. (Another fatal shooting of a teen was not connected, ACLED concluded.) Dawit Kelete, 30, who drove into the protest on July 4, 2020, killing Taylor and seriously injuring another person, was sentenced to 78 months in jail. The judge said that while there was no evidence he hit the protesters intentionally, his conduct was “extremely reckless.”
Mays died in the early morning of June 29, 2020, while driving a stolen Jeep in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, which protesters occupied for three weeks after police abandoned the area. No one has been charged in Mays’s death.
In Minneapolis, one person was killed, according to ACLED. The Max It Pawn Shop was set on fire during protests on May 28, 2020, and then two months later, police discovered a charred body in the wreckage. Surveillance video footage showed Montez Terriel Lee, 26, pouring an accelerant around the pawn shop and lighting it on fire. Lee was sentenced to 10 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said.
“I said, ‘I’d like to give you 10,000 National Guard or soldiers.’ They rejected me. Nancy Pelosi rejected me.”
— Trump
This has been repeatedly debunked. Trump and his allies have invented the claim that he requested 10,000 troops before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, twisting an offhand comment into a supposed order to the Pentagon. A Colorado judge considered testimony in November on this point and dismissed a Trump aide’s account as “incredible” and “completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”
In 2021, we explored this claim twice and debunked it, each time awarding Four Pinocchios. Then, in late 2022, the Jan. 6 committee released its report and dozens of transcribed interviews that provided new details on the meetings in which Trump claims he requested troops at the Capitol.
That report underscored how Trump has little basis to make this claim, saying that he brought up the issue on at least three occasions but in such vague and obtuse ways that no senior official regarded his words as an order.
Moreover, the committee said that when he referenced so many troops, it was not because he wanted to protect the Capitol. He “floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by left-wing counter protesters,” the report said.
“Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches spewing antisemitic hate. And what did the president then at the time say? ‘There were fine people on each side.’”
— Harris
Trump’s meaning is in dispute. The march on Charlottesville by white supremacists in August 2017 — and Trump’s response to it — was a central event of his presidency. Over the course of several days, Trump made a number of contradictory remarks, permitting both his supporters and foes to create their own version of what happened.
Harris suggested that Trump said the white supremacists were “very fine people.” But the reality is more complicated. Trump was initially criticized for not speaking more forcefully against the white nationalists on the day of the clashes, Aug. 12. Then, in an Aug. 14 statement, Trump condemned right-wing hate groups — “those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
But Trump muddied the waters on Aug. 15, a day later, by also saying: “You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” It was in this news conference that he said: “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Trump added: “There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group, there were some bad ones.”
The problem for Trump is that there was no evidence of anyone other than neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the Friday night rally on Aug. 11. He asserted there were people who were not alt-right who were “very quietly” protesting the removal of Lee’s statue.
It’s possible Trump became confused and was really referring to the Saturday rallies. But that’s also wrong. A Fact Checker examination of videos and testimony about the Saturday rallies found that there were white supremacists, there were counterprotesters — and there were heavily armed anti-government militias who showed up on Saturday.
The evidence shows there were no quiet protesters against removing the statue that weekend.
“And be clear on that point, Donald Trump, the candidate, has said in this election there will be a bloodbath if … the outcome of this election is not to his liking.”
— Harris
Trump is being quoted out of context. Harris suggests Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the election. But in a March 16 rally, Trump used the word when talking about the impact of Chinese electric vehicles on the U.S. auto industry.
“China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think, that they’re going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border,” Trump said. “We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected. Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath, for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”
The Trump campaign noted that one of the definitions of “bloodbath,” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “a major economic disaster.” It also means “a notably fierce, violent, or destructive contest or struggle.”
Trump, of course, frequently quotes his opponents out of context and unfairly twists their words.
“And these people are trying to get them [undocumented immigrants] to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”
— Trump
This is false. There is no evidence Democrats want undocumented immigrants to vote — which would be against the law.
“No judge looked at it [lawsuits claiming fraud in the 2020 election] and said, they said we didn’t have standing. That’s the other thing, they said we didn’t have standing, a technicality.”
— Trump
This is false. Many 2020 election lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies were rejected on the merits, by judges who examined the evidence. The main case involving standing was at the Supreme Court, which tossed out the long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and several other states, asking the court to bar four states from casting their electoral votes for Biden and to shift the selection of electors to the states’ legislatures. The court said Texas lacked standing to pursue the case, saying it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said he would have allowed the case to be heard, for technical reasons, but he offered little hope he would have granted Trump the relief he sought. “I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief,” Alito wrote, “and I express no view on any other issue.”
“I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and Biden put it back on day one.”
— Trump
This is mostly false. Trump enabled the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — which would have doubled the export of Russian natural gas to Germany — over congressional opposition. “Successive U.S. Administrations and Congresses have opposed Nord Stream 2, reflecting concerns about European dependence on Russian energy and the threat Russia poses to Ukraine,” the Congressional Research Service said in a 2021 report.
Trump’s first secretary of state essentially allowed the pipeline to proceed, and only late in Trump’s administration could Congress pass a law that made the pipeline subject to sanctions that halted construction for one year. But by then it was largely complete. Biden waived those sanctions in an effort to mend fences with Germany — but the whole project was killed after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“It is well known that he said of Putin that he can do whatever the hell he wants and go into Ukraine.”
— Harris
This is partly false. Trump did not make this statement in the context of an invasion of Ukraine. In fact, Trump did not issue any invitation to Russia to invade U.S. allies but (in his telling) was informing the leader of a NATO member country that he would not defend that country from a Russian attack if Trump deemed the nation was delinquent on payments to the military alliance.
In a February rally, Trump said “one of the presidents of a big country” at one point asked him whether the United States would still defend the country if they were invaded by Russia even if they “don’t pay.”
“No, I would not protect you,” Trump claimed he told that leader. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
“It is well known that he said when Russia went into Ukraine it was brilliant.”
— Harris
Trump did not use that exact word. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Trump called Putin a “genius” and “very savvy.”
“You gotta say, that’s pretty savvy,” Trump said on a conservative talk radio show of Putin’s decision to declare certain breakaway regions in Ukraine as independent. “And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.”
“This is genius,” Trump said. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“It is well known he exchanged love letters with Kim Jong Un.”
— Harris
Trump called them “love letters.” In 2018, Trump said of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: “We fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, in his 2020 book “Rage,” revealed that Trump had permitted him to read and transcribe 27 letters and wrote that “Trump has personally said they are ‘love letters.’” Woodward quoted parts of the letters, and the full file of letters was made available to North Korea expert Robert Carlin, who analyzed them for Foreign Policy magazine.
In one letter, written in 2019, Trump “incredibly” closes with “your friend,” Carlin writes. But he said the letters are mostly an exchange of negotiating positions on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
“We’re in for 250 billion [dollars] or more [in aid to Ukraine] because they don’t ask Europe, which is a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are. … We’re in for 250 to 275 billion. They’re into a 100 to 150.”
— Trump
This is false. As of June 30, European aid to Ukraine exceeds U.S. aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. European nations have allocated $110 billion, compared with $83 billion for the United States. Europe has also pledged an additional $85 billion, which has not been allocated, compared with $25 billion for the United States. As a percentage of the economy, the U.S. percentage ranks much lower than 21 other countries, Kiel estimates.
About $36 billion in military assistance has been provided by European Union countries, compared with $56 billion by the United States, according to the State Department.
“He [NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg] got these countries, the 28 countries at the time, to pay up, he said. I’ve never seen — he’s the head of NATO — he said ‘I’ve never seen.’ For years, we were paying almost all of NATO. We were being ripped off by European nations, both on trade and on NATO. I got them to pay up by saying one of the statements you made before, if you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you, otherwise we would have never gotten it, he said. It was one of the most incredible jobs that he’s ever seen done.”
— Trump
When he was president, Trump often attributed quotes to Stoltenberg that could not be confirmed, such as: “Secretary Stoltenberg has been maybe Trump’s biggest fan, to be honest with you. He goes around telling — he made a speech the other day. He said, ‘Without Donald Trump, maybe there would be no NATO.’” Stoltenberg said no such thing.
Throughout the 2016 campaign, his presidency and now this election, Trump has demonstrated that he has little notion of how NATO is funded and operates. He repeatedly claimed that other members of the alliance “owed” money to the United States and that they were delinquent in their payments. Then he claimed credit for the money “pouring in” as a result of his jawboning, even though much of the increase in those countries’ contributions was set under guidelines arranged during the Obama administration.
“And for 18 months, we had nobody killed [in Afghanistan].”
— Trump
This is misleading. In Trump’s phrasing, it sounds as if no troops were killed in Afghanistan during the last 18 months of his presidency. A Defense Department database shows 12 deaths from hostile action in that period. There was an 18-month gap with no fatalities across Trump’s and Biden’s combined presidencies. We recently gave Trump Two Pinocchios for this claim.
“We wouldn’t have left $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind.”
— Trump
This is false, especially because Trump referred to “brand new” equipment. Over two decades of war, the United States spent $83 billion to train, equip and house the Afghan military and police — so weapons are just a part of that. Tanks, vehicles, helicopters and other gear did fall into the hands of the Taliban when the U.S.-trained force quickly collapsed. In 2022, CNN reported that a Defense Department report estimated that $7 billion of military equipment had been left behind.
“This is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent. The Central Park Five — took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.”
— Harris
The ad did not directly say this. In 1989, Trump placed a full-page newspaper ad calling for a return of the death penalty following a rape in New York’s Central Park, but his message was strongly implied. Five Black and Latino teenagers were convicted, spent years in prison and were later cleared in the case.
“I said, well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, kill the person ultimately. And if they pled guilty, then they pled we’re not guilty.”
— Trump
This is false. The Central Park Five confessions were coerced and then recanted. No one was killed.
“The former president has said that climate change is a hoax.”
— Harris
This is true. Trump has said this several times.
“We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. … Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs.”
— Harris
This is out of date. The number of manufacturing jobs rebounded since the pandemic, but growth in these jobs has essentially stalled. After a decline this year, the number of manufacturing jobs as of August is slightly lower than the number in October 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dating from February 2021, the first month of employment data for Biden’s presidency, about 710,000 manufacturing jobs have been created.
“They lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs this last month.”
— Trump
Trump understates the loss. The number of manufacturing jobs fell by 24,000 from July to August, according to preliminary BLS estimates.
“Biden doesn’t go after people because supposedly China paid him millions of dollars. He’s afraid to do it between him and his son. They get all this money from Ukraine, they get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder, why is he so loyal to this one? That one? Ukraine? China? Why did he get $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow’s wife?”
— Trump
This is false. There is no evidence Biden received millions of dollars from China. Republican congressional investigators claimed Biden’s son Hunter received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, a Russian billionaire and the widow of the former mayor of Moscow. In 2022, The Fact Checker investigated this transaction and learned that the investment vehicle that received the money was for a real estate deal involving Hunter’s partner, Devon Archer. In congressional testimony, Archer confirmed Baturina was his client and not connected to Hunter Biden.
“I rebuilt our entire military.”
— Trump
This is false. This is a golden-oldie claim that Trump frequently made as president. Trump has said his military budgets were the biggest in history, but adjusted for inflation, his administration’s budgets lag behind some years during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The biggest defense budget was in 2010, and in inflation-adjusted dollars, it was nearly 10 percent larger than Trump’s 2020 budget.
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